Stand up for Education: Time to Deliver

GCE’s Global Action Week for Education in 2017 takes place 23-29 April and focuses on ensuring accountability for SDG4, and active citizen participation.

In 2015, citizens campaigned successfully for governments to commit to a Sustainable Development Goal which ensured that everyone has the right to quality education – education which should be public, equitable, inclusive and free. Two years later, it is time for governments to prove they are working towards this goal – it is time to deliver.

While there are challenges to the realisation of this right, from long-term conflict to national elections and policy changes, commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals, and to the Education 2030 agenda are long term and cannot be ignored.

At the same time, citizens must be given a voice in any decision-making process which impacts on their lives. Yet in too many countries the voice of citizens is being stifled; across all regions of the world, certain national governments have taken more aggressive action to limit civil society activity, from restrictions on funding, ‘political activity’ or protest, to direct criminalisation of civil society activity.

Education underpins many of the SDGs, and it is fundamental to the realisation of other rights. Governments must deliver on this goal, and citizens must be able to play their part in holding them to account for it. The cost of not delivering education is too high to bear.

This year, the Global Campaign for Education is calling on governments to:

develop, fund and implement credible plans for the full set of targets for the education SDG (SDG4)

strengthen public systems and state capacities to ensure that education is free, quality, and equitable

ensure that there are credible, transparent mechanisms for the participation of civil society in monitoring and accountability for the SDG4 agenda.

We are asking teachers, students, education campaigners and members of the public to take part in events happening all around the world during Global Action Week for Education, which runs from 23-29 April 2017.

Global Action Week for Education is one of the major focal points for the education movement. Created and led by the Global Campaign for Education, it provides everyone campaigning for the right to education with an opportunity to make targeted efforts to achieve change on the ground, with the added support of millions of members of the public worldwide joining together for the same cause.